Our togetherness
Our employees are important to us. That is why we endeavour to offer our employees the best possible working conditions. A good working atmosphere plays a key role in this. We have laid down this principle in our service agreement on respectful cooperation, so that there is no place for any form of discrimination, bullying, stalking or violence at our company.
Flexible working models
At the HU, core working hours apply from Monday to Thursday between 9 am and 3 pm and on Fridays between 9 am and 1 pm. Outside of these core working hours, you have the opportunity to determine the start and end of your working day yourself within the framework time (Monday to Friday from 6 a.m. to 7.30 p.m.), provided that university procedures (office hours, teaching etc.) do not restrict this flexibility.
Working from home or from another location outside the university? This is regulated by a service agreement on mobile working. This means that the proportion of mobile working and working in person can be organised very flexibly. You can agree this with your line manager and employees depending on your tasks. As a rule, we have a 60 per cent to 40 per cent ratio of presence to mobile work, but other models are possible on an individual or departmental basis.
With us, you have the opportunity to take unpaid special leave of up to four weeks in the course of a calendar year, provided there are no official or operational reasons to the contrary. During the special leave, your salary or remuneration will continue to be paid and will be offset at the end of the year against your salary or remuneration for the months of November and December, taking into account the annual special payment ("Christmas bonus").
Compatibility of career and family
Do you need to reconcile work and family life? HU supports you with childcare services, flexible and/or reduced working hours, advice on maternity leave, parental leave and a family-friendly infrastructure such as family rooms.
In our own daycare centre "Die Lupe", 15 educators look after around 90 children aged eight weeks to school age. The daycare centre's services and opening hours are geared towards the needs of students and employees, making a significant contribution to the goal of reconciling family, studies and work.
HU employees can take up to three years of parental leave, even at different times. You can take up to 24 months of this parental leave until your child is 8 years old. Part-time parental leave is also possible with us. You can take this while receiving parental allowance for an average working week of up to 30 hours (32 hours per week for children born after 1 September 2021).
Statutory maternity protection applies with a protection period of six weeks before and eight weeks after the birth. During this period, the employer may not employ the pregnant woman under any circumstances. In addition, the following maternity protection measures also apply: protection of health in the workplace, special protection against dismissal and protection of income during the employment ban.
The statutory child sick days include up to 15 working days per parent. Single parents are entitled to 30 working days. If there are several children, parents can claim a total of up to 35 working days per child and parent in 2024 and 2025, or 70 working days in the case of single parents. Since 2024, there has been an unlimited entitlement to child sickness benefit if the child is hospitalised.
Our health services
Our aim is to enable you to work with motivation without losing sight of your health and well-being. We want to support you in strengthening your health resources and minimising stress at your workplace. This applies not only to physical activity, which we support with programmes such as business yoga, but also courses to strengthen your health skills, preventive medical check-ups and other medical services such as vaccinations.
Provision and additional benefits
HU supports you in improving your financial situation with capital-forming benefits. You can specify a portion of your net salary to be withheld and transferred by HU to a savings account. For its part, HU will top up this portion with up to 6.65 euros for full-time employees and 13.29 euros for trainees.
If you are employed at HU as an employee covered by the collective bargaining agreement of the federal states (TV-L), you are compulsorily insured as part of the public service in the Versorgungsanstalt des Bundes und der Länder (VBL). The benefits provided by the VBL include a lifelong additional pension in old age, protection for surviving dependants, reduced earning capacity pension, social components for maternity protection periods, parental leave and reduced earning capacity.
We value long-serving colleagues and honour their commitment to the company with one-off payments. These amount to 350 euros for employees with 25 years of service and 500 euros for employees with 40 years of service. Employees celebrating 25 and 40 years of service receive an additional day's holiday. Civil servants receive 350 euros after 25 years of service and 450 euros after 40 years of service as an anniversary bonus.